Trieste Estate 2018 identity

The identity for the 2018 Trieste Summer Festival captures the beauty of the sun and the sea.

Background: We are designing the communication for the 2018 Trieste Summer Festival for the fourth year in a row. Trieste is a beautiful Italian city by the Mediterranean Sea. The summer festival runs for three months, with over 250 events ranging from theatre to concerts to cinema. We were invited to work on the project by fellow designer and mentor, the great Paolo Tassinari, who was in charge of the city’s cultural initiatives. It was one of the most interesting briefs we ever got, and it shows that every good design project starts with a good client.

Reasoning: The posters we worked on from the previous three focused on the sun as a central element. This year we re-focused the attention to the horizon. You can see some amazing sunsets right from the central square of Trieste. We were trying to capture the combination of the sun and the sea, with simple shapes and color variations.

Challenges: We wanted to stay very close to the concept of previous years, without being repetitive. So we used simple, punchy colors. Those self-inflicted rules enabled us to create more than thirty variations until we came to the final design.

Time constraints: With an institutional client, like the Municipality of Trieste, decisions normally take some time. But this year, the deadlines were too tight for procrastination—on both sides.

Specific demands: Some projects get easier when you work on them multiple times, and some get harder. Trieste Estate is one of those projects that get harder every year. However, it looks like it was done in one sunny afternoon. That’s the art of it.